Two weeks ago, Mrs Fiona Maguire had phoned in to the station and said that her husband DI Donny Maguire had gone out to work in the morning and not come home. When questioned, his colleagues had seen him at work, but then he’d gone home, apparently. Only, he hadn’t. Now DI Hunter was knocking at Mrs Maguire’s door, DS Cory Farmer alongside him. Hunter found Cory Farmer a relaxing presence. Also, he thought that the younger man was shaping up to be a really good copper. Farmer was neat, astute, endlessly diligent, maybe a touch too compassionate; but Hunter liked him. He liked him a lot better than Donny Maguire, who he had always thought to be on the take and might one day pay the price for it. Mrs Maguire opened the door, took one look at Hunter’s face and said: ‘David? What is it? Have you heard something?’

‘Can we come in?’ he asked.

Fiona stepped back and Hunter and DS Farmer stepped inside. She led them into a big square lounge, done out in tones of olive green and brilliant orange, and they all three sat down on a chocolate-brown fake leather couch.

‘Well?’ she said. She looked pale and totally wrung out.

David Hunter eyed her with sympathy. He knew Donny Maguire rather too well, and he knew the man was basically an arsehole. Donny was notorious among the Old Bill as a copper who regularly got too rough with weaker offenders, who bullied the younger members of the police force, who wouldn’t be averse to taking a drink from any of the mobs that ruled the London streets and who was a player when it came to females of all varieties.

Donny Maguire, when he set his mind to it, could charm the birds out of the trees. No woman was safe if she was under fifty. And God how the women lapped it up. Standing in the station yard, female PCs would be passing by, smiling coyly at the twat and saying ‘Hi, Donny.’ Out on duty, it was the same. Donny had charm, he knew he could pull without even trying. He probably had ten women on the go besides his long-suffering wife, and if Donny hadn’t given poor Fiona an unfortunate dose of something somewhere along the way then Hunter was very much mistaken in his estimation of the man.

DS Farmer had turned to his boss and summed it up neatly on the way over here.

‘If I was the wife and I’d lost that bastard,’ he said, ‘I would be hanging the flags out and having a party. I wouldn’t be looking for him.’

Hunter’s best guess was that Donny had taken off somewhere with one of those women he’d been so keen on shagging. Somewhere like the Costa Del Sol. And while they were all running around in circles trying to get a trace on him, there he’d be, lying on a beach, living it large, having kissed the grey shores of England and his wife and even his kids, the poor little sods, a not very fond farewell. He hadn’t gone out through any of the airports or seaports, they knew that already. Checks had been made. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t stolen abroad somehow. You could hire a boat in any harbour, and that was probably what he’d done.